


The utmost limit of a gasp of breath

by a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear of Death, First Kiss, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Last Kiss, Loss, M/M, Mercy Killing, Mind Meld, presumably i did this to hurt my own feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words/pseuds/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard is dying, slowly, on a ship with 430 people. And somehow, he realises that he is dying alone.</p><p>__________________________________________________<br/>Jim doesn't come anymore. Hasn't for ages. Maybe never will, never again. </p><p>When Leonard wakes in the night and has a brief period of lucidity, he cries his heart out for his best friend, his maybe something more, and for himself and his aloneness. He cries because he is trapped in a dying body in a military vehicle, surrounded by hard vacuum and thirty light years between him and his little girl. Even more between him and the nearest person on this goddamn ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The utmost limit of a gasp of breath

It was in those days when they didn't know if he would live or die, when he became a living ghost. 

A few hours on the edge of life, a few days, a few weeks, they were one thing. When Leonard's condition that "could go either way" stretched into its third month, Jim stopped visiting. Couldn't watch him die any longer. Leonard knew the feeling, but he also knew that Jim wouldn't come and finish him with a quadruple dose of morphenolog. He didn't have the energy, or the strength, to be disappointed.

He didn't keep track of this time personally. Those few who could bear to see him narrated the truth to him in parts; no one wanted to say to it, but between them they said enough that he could piece together a picture if he concentrated.

He didn't talk much, was rarely lucid and frequently confused. It was uncomfortable around his feeding tube, and after a while he learned that they wanted to feel  _good_  for having done an act of charity for a dying friend. They did not want the ghost to talk back to them.

For the first weeks, hands were laid gently on him, his cheek was kissed, friends tucked the corners of his sheets in before they left. 

Now though, no one wanted the reminder of this barely-living corpse. No one wanted to think of their impending loss; instead they chose, as people so often do, to accept him in his current state, and therefore accept him  _as_  his current state. 

No more touches. No more I-love-yous or when-you're-betters. He just lies there, barely aware of what goes on, then distressed and panicking when he is, and becomes a cross between a diary and a living gravestone to himself. 

People come and tell him their secrets at a respectful distance. What happened in their day. Who they talked to. 

They do not tell him about his treatment, because there is none, and they do not tell him about ship's business because it is none of his. They tell him that they miss him.  _I'm not dead yet._  He thinks resentfully, but he doesn't even believe it himself.

He fulfills the role of a beloved object, and he is so incredibly lonely. If whatever this is doesn't kill him, the loneliness might. Dying alone might. He wants to be loved with the kind of passion that would make him gasp out words around his feeding tube, to have someone clutch him and shake him and  _order him_  not to go. 

But no, Jim doesn't come anymore. Hasn't for ages. Maybe never will, never again. 

When Leonard wakes in the night and has a brief period of lucidity, he cries his heart out for his best friend, his maybe-something-more, and for himself and his aloneness. He cries because he is trapped in a dying body in a military vehicle, surrounded by hard vacuum and thirty light years between him and his little girl. Even more between him and the nearest person on this goddamn ship. 

When he next wakes, a whole day has passed, or maybe two, and it is night again and there is a Vulcan, whispering irrelevant, illogical nothings to him, just to say something. 

It isn't the first time Spock's come, or the first time he's been grateful, but it's been a week since someone touched him out of anything other than necessity, and a whole month since Jim came; it is the first time he has been willing to beg.

"Please," Leonard croaks, and Spock looks mildly startled, as people often do after a few days in which he doesn't talk, until they realise that he has this small part left, just sometimes, when he's lucky. "Touch me."

Spock looks at him, frowning slightly. "To do so may be detrimental to your state."

He swallows to clear his throat; it takes several tries. He thinks he might be finally dying. "Fuck my state. Fuck me. Touch me like I'm an alive thing."

"Leonard." Spock had always called him doctor. Only now, when it's so painfully obvious that he no longer is one does he abandon the moniker.

He feels his eyes fill with tears, and reaches out a weak limb as far as he can; his right hand stretching a few scarce inches, a suggestion of a movement that Spock is the first to recognise for what it is. 

Spock takes his hand, and that strange contact, his skin on someone living's flesh only makes his loneliness more abject by contrast. He sobs, and it is painful and the noise liquid in his throat. 

"I don't wanna... Don't wanna die alone." He gargles the words through a mouthful of wet, clinging as tight as he can in a pathetic grip on Spock's fingers. He has hours left, and he is terrified. 

"Allow me to mindmeld with you." Spock's voice is hoarse and insistent, and he offers the one thing Leonard had never thought he would accept. 

He nods. 

The fingers of Spock's other hand fall onto his face and the burden of speech is lifted from him, the ease of mind slipping against mind, of feelings ebbing in and out of one another is unlike any he has ever experienced. 

He tells Spock he is lonely without the need of words, and Spock knows, Spock grieves for him. When finally they do talk, he feels no better, only less alone.

_Doctor M'Benga has estimated that you will die within the next forty eight hours._

_I don't wanna go. I just wanna get better._

_You will not. I am sorry, Leonard. I would go in your place if I could._

Bones believes him. 

_It hurts. Spock it hurts so bad, it hurts so bad I want to die to get away from it, but I'm too scared. I'm scared of what's out there._

_After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,_  
 _The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.  
_ It is a quote, Leonard is sure, but he cannot remember who said the words.

_Jim won't come, will he?_

_No, Jim will not come. He does not wish to leave your room or for you to leave it in the knowledge that this is goodbye._

Leonard is crying and sobbing and shaking with all the tension his aching, wasted muscles can muster. 

_Will you hold me? Whilst I die?_

He feels a droplet fall onto his cheek that isn't his, and feels desolate for the knowledge that he has had to beg for this to happen. To beg for someone to give him his moment to grieve for himself, and to grieve for him in turn. 

_Yes. I will hold you forever._

He feels lips against his own, cool against his fevered skin, and he looks up into brown eyes, glistening with tears of their own, as Spock's fingers release his hand and come up to hold his head, firmly, one hand on either side. 

"You are not alone. I have come and you are not alone." Spock tells him. 

And then those strong hands snap to the side and Leonard doesn't even feel the pain as his neck breaks. 

He has a few split seconds, though of slipping into that coma that will lead to his death within the minute, of a bleary image of a sharp hair cut and a stricken expression, of those killing fingers, stroking his meld points. 

Just long enough to know that Spock is with him, in him as he dies. 

_Thank you._

Spock is right. 

There is nothing at all.

________________________________________________

The quote is from one of John Wilmot's poems.


End file.
